Claude Bosi at Bibendum: Michelin Man is aiming for the stars

Fay Maschler just wants Claude Bosi to relax a little
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Fay Maschler1 February 2018

Dinner: 3/5

Lunch: 4/5

What is it that chefs who have two Michelin stars want most in the world? Three Michelin stars. You wouldn’t have to be Keith Lemon on Through the Keyhole to infer from the bookshelves of red guides that feature in the revamp of the restaurant Bibendum, where new chef and business partner Claude Bosi has set his sights.

There are other clues: trinkets for sale, including a butter dish disquietingly reminiscent of the original Michelin Man ashtray, yours to take home for £45; a silver salt and pepper set, also with tyre-like girth, £150; knives from Le Fidèle inscribed with Bosi’s signature; a chap on the door in a bowler hat wearing an earpiece to enable communication with the restaurant receptionist upstairs; chefs visible in the kitchen behind glass doors wearing classic tall toques; a tasting menu whose existence was denied until suddenly it appeared.

Bosi won two stars at his restaurant Hibiscus, first in Ludlow, then in Mayfair. This venture in partnership with Sir Terence Conran and Michael Hamlyn sees him inheriting and inhabiting a slice of London culinary legend forged in 1987, when Conran engaged Simon Hopkinson to cook in his new restaurant in the historic Michelin building.

It is a high, wide and handsome dining space, especially on a sunny day, when light floods in from every side and through the stained-glass depictions of bibulous Bibendum himself. Eileen Gray’s Bibendum chair is now referenced in the tight curves of the banquettes.

Landmark destination: the exterior of Michelin House

A la carte prices that might cause a sharp intake of breath — £78 for roast chicken for two — are to some extent explained and ameliorated by the parade of “amuses” that arrive at the table unbidden. The Adria and Roca brothers would find familiar the midget olive tree with black “olives” (one each) fashioned from cocoa butter. Here the brittle shells enclose the flavours of pissaladière — caramelised onions, anchovies, olive oil. A slice of the tart with oily, flaky pastry might have been less hilarious but to my mind more delectable.

'The servings are, how shall we say, modest, which is fitting after the flourish of bites, but drag one’s eyes back to the first-course prices: £22 and £24 respectively'

Parmesan-punchy gougères and an eggshell filled with wild mushroom duxelles topped by coconut foam and a sprinkling of curry powder — the sort the French love that stirs up memories of Vencat — were stalwarts at Hibiscus, rightly so.

New (I think) are immaculately fried curlicues of chicken skin with a mayo into which the very essence of roast chicken seems to have been distilled. My chef companion is in raptures. We are less beguiled by a cone of foie gras ice cream dotted with raw cacao nibs where freezing seems to emphasise liveriness over innate richness.

I can imagine Sir Terence Conran, “the first Briton to visit France” (copyright Craig Brown), rejoicing in the presence of brains, sweetbreads and tripe on the menu. Getting into the spirit, we start with veal sweetbread with black garlic and gremolata and frog’s leg (it must have been a one-legged frog) served in a sauce of morels, chervil, hazelnuts and vin Jaune.

 Immaculately fried: curlicues of chicken skin with mayo 
Adrian Lourie

The servings are, how shall we say, modest, which is fitting after the flourish of bites, but drag one’s eyes back to the first-course prices: £22 and £24 respectively. Over-salting in the frog dish and later in the main course of “my mum’s tripe and cuttlefish gratin” is less forgivable. The accompanying pig’s ear and ham cake (delicious) is needed to muffle some of the tripe’s ponderous seasoning.

From the Book of PR Wisdom (a short publication): “Never let your chef clients holiday outside Europe.” Anjou pigeon “satay style” is two sombre slices of pigeon breast, one tiny green stalk acknowledging the role of vegetables and a meaty quenelle with satay sauce flavours of peanut, soy, chilli and brown sugar. It lacks the sparkle that might once have inspired it.

We share dessert of wild strawberry vacherin with 100-year-old balsamic. The fruit is fabulous, the diminutive size of the spiky meringue maybe accounting for its chalkiness. Dessert comes with its own embroidered napkin, which is rather exciting. The wine list, overseen by naturally inclined Isabelle Legeron, is a treasure trove that we dip into almost gingerly.

At lunch the following day the two first courses seem to emerge from a different kitchen. Wild garlic velouté with aged Parmesan is a bowl of sublime beauty and flavour. It could rival almost anything at Alain Passard’s L’Arpège in Paris, where it turns out Bosi has worked.

Cornish mussels in a light foam sit atop an egg-set base of baby carrots, blood orange and saffron, happily perfectly judged in colour for the shellfish as well as taste. Bread (from Hedone, says a waiter) and exceptional butter complete the picture.

Fabulous fruit: wild strawberry vacherin with 100-year-old balsamic
Adrian Lourie

Cornish cod Grenobloise — the poorer relative of turbot served in the same caper-studded sauce as in the evening — and a small leg of roast pork that crouches shyly on the magnificent trolley that on Sundays will feature beef, served with a buttery potato emulsion and three perfectly timed homely veg are the main courses.

Seemingly pulled this way and that, Claude, relax if you can, forget stars for a bit, just wow your customers in this iconic space as only you know how.

Lunch, Wed-Sun noon-2.15pm (3pm Sun). Dinner, Wed-Sat 6.30pm-9.45pm (10pm Sat).

Lunch menu £30/£36.50 for two/three courses. Tasting menu £110 for seven courses. A la carte, a meal for two with wine, about £225 including 12.5 per cent service.

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